A Past-Deadline Romance
Classes were over, and Chidori Kaname stood in front of the A/V storage room. She’d come to return some videos but had stopped with her hand just short of the door, listening curiously. She could hear a pair of voices on the other side—one male, one female, both familiar. One belonged to Tokiwa Kyoko, her best friend. The other voice was Sagara Sousuke.
“Hey... I really think we should stop. I don’t feel right about this.”
“After everything we’ve done? Why?” he asked.
Kaname could sense the tension through the door. Are Kyoko and Sousuke discussing something in secret? she wondered. It wouldn’t be right to snoop... Yet she remained rooted to the spot, listening closely.
“You’re not into me anymore?” he persisted.
“No... It isn’t that. I still really like you,” Kyoko said earnestly. “And last night... I don’t have any regrets about last night.”
What the... thought Kaname, and felt her heart begin to pound. Kyoko and Sousuke, going behind my back? No way. And what did she mean by ‘last night’?!
“I’ll never forget last night either,” Sousuke declared. “Why ruin a good thing, then?”
“Because...”
“Is this still about her?”
“Yeah... She’s my best friend, you know? And she really likes you,” Kyoko insisted. “If she knew about us, it’d really hurt her.”
Kaname felt the blood draining from her face as the world around her went dark. Part of her knew it didn’t sound like the Kyoko and Sousuke she knew, and yet the words were still deeply upsetting.
“I don’t want to betray my best friend.”
“So, what about me? Don’t my feelings matter? I’ll admit she’s attractive, but she doesn’t compare to you. She’s got someone better suited to her anyway,” Sousuke insisted.
“B-But...”
“She’ll understand. She’s a tough girl.”
I had no idea they were a couple, thought Kaname. Of course, since I don’t have anything concrete going on with Sousuke, Kyoko might not see any reason to defer. But this is still just... it’s just... “Ah...” Just then, one of the tapes slipped out of her arms. The sound of it hitting the floor brought a stop to the conversation within.
“Who’s there?!” It was Kyoko’s voice.
Kaname looked around in panic, then whispered quickly, “F-Fumoffu.”
“Oh, it’s just Bonta-kun.”
“Anyway, you have to listen to me. I keep saying, I really—”
The two were about to resume their conversation as if nothing had happened, when... “Cut, cut, cut!” A new shout from inside the room cut the conversation off angrily. “That’s all wrong! You’re supposed to follow the script, not improvise! And who said that ‘fumoffu’? Is someone out there?!”
The door burst open right in Kaname’s face. Besides Sousuke and Kyoko, six other students were crammed into the storage room, armed with a variety of equipment: lights, board reflectors, microphones and video cameras.
“Chidori?” Sousuke asked.
“Oh, it’s Kana-chan! Hey!” Kyoko waved to her, smiling her usual warm smile.
“Eh?” Kaname breathed as it sunk in that it wasn’t a lovers’ quarrel after all.
The person who’d opened the door to glare at her was a male student, holding a well-worn script. “Oh,” he said. “You know this girl?”
Kaname looked around at those present and thought for a solid three seconds. “Wait, what? Is this the ‘we were actually shooting a movie’ misunderstanding trope?”
“I don’t know what you mean by ‘trope,’ but we’re definitely shooting a movie—the emotional climax of the film society’s next masterpiece! So could you please butt out?!” the student—most likely the director—barked at her nastily before spinning around to discuss something with the student cameraman. It was as if he’d already completely forgotten her existence.
“Kana-chan, what are you doing here?” Kyoko asked, as she and Sousuke began to approach her.
“Oh? Um... Mr. Sayama asked me to return these videos,” Kaname told them. “What are you guys doing?”
“Hee hee,” Kyoko giggled. “Remember Abe-kun from the next class over? He’s in the film society and asked us if we could do a little acting for them. Right, Sagara-kun?”
“Affirmative,” Sousuke said, wearing his usual sullen expression and tight frown. It was hard to believe he’d been talking in such a romantic way earlier, even if it had just been for a role.
“The title is Seven People in Love,” Kyoko added. “It’s going to screen at next month’s West Tokyo High School Film Festival. They won the grand prize last year and got awarded 300,000 yen from the executive committee.”
“Three hundred thousand?!” Kaname exclaimed.
“Yeah. That’s why the director, Komuro-san, is so uptight.” Kyoko shot a glance at the student still arguing with the cameraman—who was apparently Komuro, the director.
“Wow. I guess he takes this really seriously,” Kaname said with genuine admiration.
Meanwhile, Sousuke folded his arms. “My foremost mission is to keep an eye out for threats to school security,” he declared. “I deemed it necessary to help with activities such as these so long as time permits.”
“Really?”
“Yes. In Nazi Germany, the Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, stoked support for war through movies and radio programs, skillfully weaving Nazi ideology into mass entertainment,” he informed them. “As a member of the student council, it is crucial that I learn more about that methodology.”
Kaname tilted her head, imagining files of Nazi officers, hands thrust into the air as they watched a sappy love story. “I think you might have a few wrong ideas about things...”
“Not an issue. The moment I see any content at odds with school policy, I’ll purge it.”
“Yeah, you’re definitely not getting this,” Kaname muttered.
Sousuke just tilted his head in confusion.
Kaname let out a sigh rife with complicated feelings. She wondered, How could he have given such a lifelike performance when doesn’t even understand what kind of movie this is? She felt like a fool for feeling so upset about it earlier... though she couldn’t deny she was relieved, as well.
Just then, Director Komuro spoke up from behind them. “I just don’t like this composition! Reflectors, could you come in a little closer?”
“No way,” they replied, “we’ll end up in the frame.”
“I need that dark and immoral feeling,” Komuro argued back. “In the end, I want that sort of... muddy emotion out of Shoko, who’s betrayed her best friend to steal Kousuke away... You know what I mean!”
“Our shooting schedule’s pretty tight. I don’t know if we have time to get everything perfect—”
“But it has to be perfect! That’s why I’m so stressed! Maybe it’s an issue with the actress. Shoko needs someone with a darker, more mature air. But...” Director Komuro squinted rudely into Kyoko’s childlike face.
The petite girl with her coke-bottle glasses and braids stared back at him, blinking.
“Tokiwa-san,” he asked, “have you read the whole script?”
“No, not all of it yet...”
“It’s done, then. We’ll change actors. You’ll play Shoko’s best friend, Kanae. You’re a better fit for that role,” the director declared.
The room immediately grew agitated as the other club members began shouting their objections:
“You can’t change actors now!”
“We’ll never make the festival!”
Komuro turned purple as he shouted back, “Shut up! What the director says, goes! The shooting team is the Tokugawa government and I’m the grand shogun! I give an order and you follow it! You give your lives for me, unsung!”
“That’s insane!”
“Shut up. We’re changing actors and that’s that,” the director declared unilaterally.
The cameraman nodded hesitantly. “All right... darn it. So how are we gonna fill the part? We’ll need to find someone to play Shoko.”
“I have the perfect Shoko right here.”
“Eh?” the cameraman said, and looked over.
The director’s eye was focused on Kaname, who’d been silently watching the proceedings up to that point.
“Um... what?” she said as she stepped back in confusion, looking around at the others.
After a passionate speech by Komuro, Kaname agreed to take the role. You’re perfect. An uncut diamond, ready to shine! Your beauty, your grace, the flawless lines of your face! He was really laying it on thick, but it was hard to say no in the face of such flattery. And she really was intrigued by the idea of participating in a movie.
“Oh, r-really? Heh... w-well, if you say so... Right, Kyoko?”
She giggled and preened, but Kyoko glared at her.
“You’re gonna ask advice from the person whose role you just stole?” she said, sulking.
The script handed to Kaname was a centimeter-thick sheaf of copy paper. Its title, as Kyoko had mentioned, was Seven People in Love. It was a love story about a group of seven men and women. A brief glance through the script suggested it was pretty good for an independent film.
“Student films are always ‘artistic’ movies about dark passions and such. Me, though—I use the materials I have on hand to film something relatable. That’s my policy,” Director Komuro boasted confidently.
Kaname was playing one of the “seven people,” a literature club member named Shoko, who was in love with the soccer club captain, Kousuke. Kousuke was Sagara Sousuke’s role, of course.
“There’s not a kissing scene, is there?” Kaname asked with a glance in his direction.
The director leaned forward. “What, you want to do one?!”
“N-No, just checking.”
“Don’t be shy. I can definitely put in a scene like that if you—”
“No, absolutely not!”
“We could have a sex scene, then—”
“Even worse!” she rebuffed him, turning bright red.
Kaname’s shooting schedule began the next day.
The director, Komuro, was a third-year student, short and skinny with a gnarled face and receding hairline more reminiscent of an old man. He also suffered from major mood swings—going from melancholic and thoughtful to exploding with rage on a dime.
Prior to the shoot, the cameraman and assistant director—a student named Sudo—confided in Kaname. “He’s selfish and self-centered, but... he was talented enough to win last year’s festival. Except now that he’s won once, he’s really feeling the pressure. I know it’s a lot to ask, but don’t hold it against him, okay?”
“Yeah, sure.”
The first scene they were shooting that day was the scene where Kousuke and Shoko met. The idea was that a casual conversation in the library had revealed an unexpected side of him, but...
“Shoko-san.” In a corner of the library, within the maze of shelves, Sousuke approached Kaname.
Wearing black wire-rimmed glasses with her hair tied into a braid, she gazed up at him in surprise. “K-Kousuke-kun...”
“Oh-hello-how-are-you-doing,” said Sousuke, whose words came in a monotonous rush—the hallmark of the worst kind of actor.
“F-Fine...”
“Shoko-san-what-are-you-reading-let-me-see-oh-is-it-Harry-Potter-ha-ha-ha-what-a-stupid-thing-to-read.”
“D-Don’t make fun, I like it,” said Kaname. “Anyway, what brings you to a place like this?”
“I-was-thinking-they-might-have-some-books-by-Tolkien-here-I’m-a-real-fan-of-Lord-of-the-Rings-but-don’t-tell-the-club-guys-ha-ha-ha.”
“What? I love those books! You do, too?”
“Yes-why-are-you-looking-at-me-that-way-is-it-that-surprising.”
“Not really... I just thought you hated that kind of—”
“Cut! Cut, cut!” Director Komuro shouted. The camera stopped rolling and the sound and lighting staff relaxed.
“Is there an issue?” Sousuke asked.
“Is there anything but?! Your performance was awful! You were just reading your lines in a monotone,” Komuro told him. “You need to change your facial expressions and put inflection into your voice!”
Of course, Sousuke had grown up on the battlefield and so lacked the sensitivity or imagination needed to perform in a movie. One might dare to say he had no acting talent whatsoever.
“Was it poor?” Sousuke asked Kaname.
“Hmm... Yeah, kinda,” she was forced to admit. “No, seriously. At least pause for sentence breaks, you know?”
“Hmm...”
“It’s too bad, since Chidori-san’s performance was pretty good. What happened? You were very natural yesterday with Tokiwa-san.”
“That’s weird, yeah. I wonder why...” Kyoko, who was now on record-keeping duty, tilted her head thoughtfully.
Sousuke folded his arms and thought silently for a while before speaking. “I can’t account for it. When I acted with Tokiwa, I could speak the fictional lines from memory, freely and without hesitation. But when I act across from Chidori...” he trailed off awkwardly.
Kaname, the director, and the others looked at him dubiously, while Kyoko whispered to herself, “Aha... even if he doesn’t realize it himself, maybe he’s unconsciously getting bashful and freezing up from nervousness. And the character’s so different, too...” She then addressed the rest of the group as she read back from the script. “Hey, hey. Why not let him do some ad-libbing, then?”
“What?”
“I think he’s having trouble giving a natural performance as a jock type,” she explained. “If you give him a little more freedom to make the role his own, he might be able to repeat yesterday’s performance.”
“Hmm...” The director folded his arms. “That just might work. What do you think, Sagara-kun?”
“Hm... I do seem to be having more trouble performing today than I did yesterday. There are so many words I’m unaccustomed to. I can read back the script as written, but that may be why it sounds unnatural,” Sousuke said casually.
“What would help you?”
“Simple phrases. Precise language. As Tokiwa said, letting me speak the lines in my own way might allow me to put on a better performance. I’d like to try.”
“You think it’ll work?”
“Affirmative.” Sousuke’s eyes flashed.
Director Komuro thought it over for a while, but finally nodded. “All right. Let’s see if that enthusiasm pays off.”
“Roger.” With that answer, Sousuke looked down and closed his eyes, focusing. He suddenly seemed to have acquired the passion of a true actor.
“Chidori-san, you just read the script as written. Okay? Now we’ll take it from the top. Take 2, roll!”
The staff assumed their places again. Kaname and Sousuke returned to their marks and took a deep breath. The clapperboard sounded, the camera rolled, and the director called, “Action!” Then the whole room fell silent.
After a moment, Sousuke stepped out and spoke to Kaname. “Shoko,” he said in his usual way. It sounded very natural indeed.
Kaname, as instructed, read the lines as she’d memorized them. “K-Kousuke-kun?”
“We meet again. Have you been well?”
“Y-Yeah...”
“What are these documents? Ah... Interrogation Techniques of the World,” he observed. “What a foolish thing to read.”
Kaname almost felt herself sag in defeat, but managed to maintain her composure. She stole a glance at the director, who motioned at her to keep going. “Oh... D-Don’t make fun of me. I love books like this. What do you want, anyway?”
“Me? I’m looking for a document entitled Illustrated Weapons of Mass Destruction. It’s a collection of information about nuclear and germ warfare.”
“What? I love that book!” she exclaimed. “You do, too?”
“Affirmative. Is that strange?”
“Not really... I just thought you hated that kind of thing.”
“I’m surprised as well,” Sousuke said, “to see you taking interest in neutron bombs and nerve gas.”
“Oh, shucks... Is it so wrong to want to live in a world like that?” Kaname asked prettily. “I’m a normal girl too, you know.”
“I see. Then you read the new article by the same writer, The Ebola Virus: Its Terrifying Military Potential?”
“Yeah! It was so exciting, like a dream. It was so easy to picture... Wait, knock it off already!”
Slam! Kaname’s vacuum knee kick slammed Sousuke into the bookshelf. Books rained down on his head from above as he collapsed.
“Cut, cut!” she exclaimed before arguing, “How long were you going to make us carry on that nutso conversation?!”
Director Komuro and the cameraman exchanged a glance.
“Well, it was just...”
“It was so surreal...”
Belatedly, they remembered to stop filming as well.
Moments later, Sousuke poked his head up out of the mountain of books that had covered him and said, expression sullen, “Are you upset about something, Chidori?”
“You shut up!” she bellowed. “What kind of high-school-aged girl wants to hear about torture techniques and killer viruses?!”
Sousuke paused. “No kind?”
“No kind!”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Well, learn!”
Duly rebuked, Sousuke fell into reflective thought.
Kaname shook her head and turned to the crew sympathetically. “I can’t believe you guys have been making him do scenes all this time. Has the whole thing been this hard?” But when they avoided meeting her eyes awkwardly, she tilted her head in confusion.
“Oh, well... actually...” the cameraman said, trying to help the director. “That scene yesterday was the first time we used Sagara-kun.”
“What?”
“We had someone else playing Kousuke until then, but... we had a little falling out, and he quit. It’s been like that with one actor after another...”
“Huh? Wait, so the only actors left... are us?”
Their silence was an affirmation: it seemed they really had all run away. This must have been news to Kyoko, too, who was staring at them, slack-jawed.
“Hmph. They lacked commitment. I’m glad I fired them,” Komuro said sulkily.
At this, the cameraman looked at him and screamed, with tears in his eyes, “How can you say that? We’ll have to redo most of the scenes we’ve shot! We’ve used up almost all of our money, the script still isn’t finished, and we’re running out of time until the festival! And we only have three actors! No one else will work with us! What are we going to do?!”
“It’ll work out somehow,” Komuro told him. “Trust me.”
“Trusting you is what got us into this mess!” the cameraman wailed, and the rest of the staff just sank to the floor in exhaustion.
Having learned the truth about the state of the shoot, Kaname and the others just stared in disbelief. A mountain of issues. An approaching deadline. A budget in the red. No hope of finishing. Was there really a point to going on like this?
Kaname started to say, “It does seem kind of...” and trailed off awkwardly.
“Don’t worry, I’ve been in situations like this before. The important thing is to keep moving!” Director Komuro stood up slowly as he spoke, a dark aura emanating from his body. “Sagara-kun, I feel like I’m facing a turning point here,” he said seriously. “I can fire you and find yet another actor, or I can wager on your latent potential, work out points of compromise, and make the film happen. It’s one of those two. What do you think?”
“I don’t want you to misjudge me,” Sousuke said confidently. “I’m a man who’s survived any number of deadly scrapes. When I accept a mission, I see it through—by any means necessary.”
“Heh heh heh. Excellent.” Komuro grinned. “I’m glad to see you’re so willing. A film set is a battle! The spark triggered when the egos of director and actor clash... It is that electric energy that will power our film!”
“Very well,” said Sousuke, and sparks did indeed fly as the two men locked eyes.
“Ohh... Th-This is...” Kaname whispered as she witnessed the strange power that flowed between them. It was the feeling of a masterpiece about to be born.
From behind her, Kyoko muttered, “But he still sucks at acting...”
Kyoko’s words would prove true: no matter how hard they tried, Sousuke remained a bad actor.
“Scene 3, take 8! Okay, action!” The camera began rolling again.
“We-meet-again-Shoko-san-how-are-you-doing-oh-Harry-Potter-are-you-reading-those-old-documents-again?” Sousuke asked again.
“D-Don’t make fun of me, I like it,” Kaname repeated. “Anyway, what brings you to a place like this?”
“I-was-thinking-they-might-have-some-books-by-Tolkien-I’ve-always-liked-them-but-of-course-that-is-classified-material.”
“Cut! Cut, cut! Die, you lousy actor!” the director shouted, throwing the microphone at Sousuke’s head.
“Hmph...” Sousuke stood perfectly still and let it hit him, but the shooting didn’t get any easier from there. Sousuke had over ten bad takes on a single scene. They would repeat it again and again, waiting patiently for him to rise to the level of ‘decent.’
“T-Take 28... Action...”
“You’re-the-only-one-for-me-Shoko-kun-I-can’t-live-without-you-please-don’t-go.”
“Cut,” said Komuro, who was beginning to lose his steam. “O-One more time...”
It felt less like filming a romance and more like filming a wild animal documentary. The cameramen, waiting weeks in frozen Siberia for a tiger to appear and reveal its mating behavior... It demanded exceptional stamina and superhuman patience from everyone involved.
Then, on the third day after Kaname joined the shoot, Director Komuro finally snapped. “No more! You’re fired! Get out of here!” His shout echoed around the set.
“Me?” said Sousuke. “Fired?”
“Yes! I don’t have any more time to waste on a rotten actor like you! The film festival is next week!”
“Heh. You run away so easily,” Sousuke responded, his manner unperturbed.
“What?”
“You don’t like my performance—that in itself is acceptable. But to turn your back on reality and seek an easier path... You’re a second-rate creator,” he criticized. “I see now that your abilities are limited.”
“I think you just suck!” Kaname added from the sidelines, but nobody was listening.
“H-How dare you! You, of all people, finding fault with my talent?! Second-rate, you say?! Who was it who hired you in the first place?!” Komuro fumed.
“I never asked you to.”
“Shut up! You don’t know the first thing about film! You’re just... You’re just, you’re just—”
Crick. Komuro, in the middle of raising his arms in fury, suddenly froze up.
“Komuro-san?” said Kaname.
There was no response. Komuro, still as stiff as a statue, gradually began to tilt before falling flat onto the floor.
“Komuro-san?!”
“Director!!!”
The group ran up to him as Komuro went into a series of painful-looking spasms.
“Where’s the medic?” Sousuke shouted. “Medic!”
“There is no medic!” Kaname told him, quickly punching the emergency number into her PHS phone.
Wee-oo wee-oo... the ambulance sped away from the school gate with its siren blaring. Kaname listlessly watched it go before letting out a sigh of despair. “Ahh... Collapsing so young,” she said with a sigh. “It really does take a psychological toll.”
“Overwork, for certain. But to fold before so minor a trial is a sign of his weakness,” Sousuke observed.
Smack! A fan (appearing out of nowhere, as usual) struck Sousuke directly on the top of his head.
“What are you doing, Chidori?”
“Shut up! It’s your fault, you know that?!” she demanded angrily. “Exploiting his lack of replacement actors to torture him like that... Now we don’t have a director!”
“Hmm...” Sousuke looked down, entering his usual ‘apparently sorry, but maybe not about the right thing’ mode.
Kyoko sighed sadly beside them. “One way or another, the film’s done for.”
“Yeah... He’ll be in the hospital a few days at least, and the festival is next week. There was already pretty much no hope of finishing the film, so we might just have to accept it, sad to say... Hmm?” Kaname started to say, then stopped. She’d noticed that the members of the film society, starting with cameraman Sudo, had turned pale and begun to tremble.
“W-We’re doomed...” Sudo moaned.
“What’s wrong?”
“The award we won at last year’s festival was the Harakasu Award. It’s picked by Harakasu Takeshi, the director famous for his violent on-set conduct...”
“And?” Kaname asked.
“The prize money for the award comes out of his pocket. When he gave us the award, he said, ‘Keep going, kids. If you don’t win the prize next year, I’ll snap all your spines with an Argentine Backbreaker and use you as sandbags. Ha ha ha.’”
“I’m sure he was just joking,” she said reassuringly/
“He wasn’t!” Sudo said, panicked. “He’s done it to others in the past. And when he gave us the award, he collected all of our addresses, including Director Komuro’s. He was serious!”
Kaname fell into silence.
“I don’t even want to think about what he’ll do if he gave us all that money and we don’t even enter!” Sudo cried out.
“Nooo! I don’t wanna diiie!” The other members of the film society had begun to wail in despair.
Kaname spoke in a soothing, motherly tone. “H-Hang on. Calm down. We don’t know for sure that you won’t enter. We might be able to work it out, even with Komuro-san gone.”
“Th-There’s no way! We figured before that we might make it through alive if we blamed it all on the director! But now...!”
Kaname said, “Okay, that’s... less sympathetic...”
“The script isn’t finished! Most of what we’ve filmed is unusable! The title is Seven People in Love but we only have three actors left! It’s impossible!” Sudo and the others cried and wailed.
That title, Seven People in Love, really did have them in a bind. With all the other performers gone, they didn’t have much to work with other than the scenes they’d already filmed. And those scenes hadn’t been shot in any logical order, so it was all chaos. In a movie with so many intertwining human relationships, there was no way to string random ones together into a coherent story.
For instance, one of the characters was a boy named Kinji. Kinji was an honor student with a crush on a girl named Saori, but Saori was involved in sex work. Kinji struggles when he learns this shocking truth, but...
“...but the only scenes we actually filmed were the one where Kinji is crying about it and the one where he slaps Saori,” Sudo explained.
“He’ll just look like a crazy person.”
“The rest of what we’ve shot is the same way. None of the individual episodes are finished. There’s nothing we can do!”
“Hmm...”
Standing at the school gate at dusk, the members of the film society fell to their knees, weeping. A crow let out its mocking cry as it flew through the sky above them.
Kaname sank in despondency. She’d really been enjoying filming the movie, too...
“I understand the situation.” It was Sousuke speaking, which inspired blank looks from the crew. “But it’s too soon to give up. As long as the will remains, the fight isn’t lost. For the sake of our dearly departed director, we must finish the film!”
“Sousuke...”
His voice brimmed with determination and grim tragedy, despite its usual even tone. “I will take command henceforth. Trust and follow me,” he declared defiantly.
Five days later, Sunday arrived. Komuro had been discharged from the hospital and was convinced by the cameraman, Sudo, to come to the West Tokyo High School Film Festival with them. Komuro resisted, claiming that he didn’t want to go, that he didn’t want to die, but in the end, the film society members forced their way into his house and dragged him to the festival venue.
The venue was an independent theater in Kichijoji, and it was reserved for the film festival all day. Creators from all over the area were gathered there, crowding the entrance hall.
“Where are Chidori-san and the others?” Komuro asked.
“They’re here,” said Sudo. “Over there.”
He looked over and saw Kaname and Kyoko, snoozing away on a bench in the smoking area. Beside them sat a weary-looking Sousuke.
“Director. You’re out of the hospital?” Sousuke asked, looking up at him with bloodshot eyes.
“Yes. But what in the world do you think you’re doing?”
“We’ve been editing all day,” Sousuke told him. “We’ve gone days without sleep. Even she was forced to give in,” he said, indicating the fast-asleep Kaname.
“Editing? The film?”
“Yes. We just finished it,” Sousuke said, as the buzzer to indicate the screening rang out.
On the screen... A title in a delicate font appeared, with a sad melody playing in the background.
《Seven People in Love / La lutte décisive》
The title faded out.
A girl stood on the roof of the school, her long black hair streaming in the wind. Her face, seen in profile, was slender and pretty. Her eyes were filled with loneliness.
It was Kaname.
She trailed her fingers quietly along the railing and let out a quiet sigh. In an affected voice, she went into a monologue. “I wonder how this happened. I had no idea... that love could be so cruel.” The raw power of those words. The pain in them... The viewer couldn’t help but be drawn into the story to come.
The scene seemed to melt into another. Another girl appeared. She was crying. A frail young man spoke to her, saying, “Why are you crying? Did you fight with your parents again?”
“No,” the girl said. “I would never cry over something like that...”
Then the scene changed. It was a shot of Sousuke, watching their conversation from a distance.
The scene changed again, and another couple appeared.
“I’ve made my decision. I’m going to trust other people more. And so...”
“Hiromi, I’m sorry. I... I...”
This, too, was intercut with a scene of Sousuke watching from the nearby school courtyard.
The scene changed again.
“This is cruel. It’s too cruel! You just can’t... you just can’t...!” A young man choked and sobbed, fists clenched and trembling.
Sousuke’s grim shadow watched him in secret.
The montage continued on for a while. Fragments of love stories—a mosaic of men and women, loving and then hurting each other. It was sometimes sweet, sometimes sad. But watching them all silently was a man with the faint smell of gunpowder about him.
The story took a sudden turn. A couple was having a soulful conversation, just like the others before them.
“Are you sure you’re all right with a girl like me? I don’t want to be hurt again.”
“If you get hurt, I’ll share that hurt with you. So don’t be afraid. We’re in this together, don’t you see?”
“Takaya-kun!”
“Hiromi!”
Then suddenly, there was an explosion.
Glass went flying. Flames rose. Black smoke billowed and the warped air shook the camera. Screams and shouts rang out. Sirens blared as firefighters and police raced to the scene. Ambulances wailed and citizens wept—they were all foreigners for some reason, with the CNN logo visible in the corner of the screen.
The scene changed to show another explosion. Blurry images cropped up of houses blown up and burning.
“Kinji-kun!” shouted Kaname’s friend, Inaba Mizuki, out of nowhere.
Their classmate Onodera Kotaro appeared beside her. “It’s no use,” he said. “Not even his bones are left!”
An explosion. An explosion. Another explosion. For some reason, there was even a cut of an F1 crash. There was a maelstrom of red flame as the characters burned.
It all cut to black.
Now a ruined hospital appeared on the screen. On the cold floor strewn with rubble lay Kyoko, covered in blood. Kaname ran up to her. “Kanae?!” she cried, “Speak to me!”
“Sh-Shoko-chan... Listen to me,” Kyoko choked out. “Watch out... Watch out for Kousuke.”
“Wh-What did you say?”
“He’s... He’s the one behind the bombings. He was tortured by enemy forces in the Gulf War, and it made him hate the world. If... If his rampage isn’t stopped— ghk.”
“Kanaeeeee!” Kaname howled. There was a clap of lightning and the heavy strains of Shostakovich (used without permission) rang out. “This can’t be forgiven,” she sobbed. “I will have my revenge!”
And so, Kaname’s quest for vengeance began.
There were night scenes in debauched cities. Dangerous jungles never trodden by human foot. Red wastelands scarred by war (mostly borrowed from Denpa Shonen). With the perseverance of a snake, Kaname pursued Sousuke.
Then at last, in the ruins of some building somewhere (to the observant viewer, this was the same hospital as before), the two of them faced each other down, armed to the teeth.
“It’s time to die, Kousuke,” she declared. “I won’t let you hurt anyone else!”
“Very well,” he returned. “You’ve chosen a path stained in blood. If you wish to stop me, then go ahead and try!”
The battle, a John Woo-style gunfight, began. The scene, of both characters double-wielding pistols and firing at each other, was surprisingly convincing. The guns they were using, in fact, looked just like the real thing (because they were).
As the grand battle ended, it was Kaname who managed to survive, though that survival had come with a heavy cost.
“Hrk!” Sousuke fell to the ground, shot through the heart.
As he lay there, the light going out of his eyes, soaked in (a rather excessive amount of) fresh blood, Kaname stood over him and said, “Why? Why did you perform those acts of barbaric terrorism?”
“Heh... All for love,” he choked out. “All of my sins have been out of love for you...”
It wasn’t much of an explanation, but nevertheless, tears fell from Kaname’s eyes (the quantity here, too, was a bit excessive). “You stupid man,” she wailed. “You had another love already...”
“Shoko. Forgive... me...” And with that, Sousuke died.
Kaname was back on that lonely roof. As a cold wind blew, her long black hair streamed in it (for just a few milliseconds, the tip of a fan entered the frame, but few people noticed.) Once again, her monologue played over the visual.
“I wonder how this happened,” she intoned again. “I had no idea... that love could be so cruel.”
As the camera slowly panned out, the word “Fin” appeared on-screen. A song by Sahashi Toshihiko (used without permission) played as the credits rolled. And at the end, in large font...
《A film by Komuro Takahiro》
And so ended the Jindai High School film society’s Seven People in Love/The Final Battle in Hell.
Director Komuro lay on the ground, seizing and foaming at the mouth. He had to be carted out on a stretcher. Sousuke watched him go, wistfully. “All the hard work was worth it,” he said. “Look, Chidori. The genius of our work caused the director to faint from happiness.”
“Your sensibilities sure are a kind of genius...” Kaname whispered to herself, then looked around the spectator seats from the back row. It was about the response she expected—confused chatter and scattered applause. “Well... it wasn’t the worst it could have been, given that Sousuke was in charge. We managed to make something resembling a coherent narrative, at least.”
Just then, a man appeared in front of them. He was swarthy and muscular, with a mohawk and rugged features. This was the violent producer that Sudo had mentioned earlier. “Are you the ones who made that?” the towering giant asked, his gaze as penetrating as knives and his voice reminiscent of the growl of a bear.
“Um, well... It’s not quite as simple as that, see—” Kaname started.
“Are you or aren’t you?!” he shouted, freezing her stiff.
Sousuke then answered boldly in her place, “Affirmative. We made it.”
“You did?!”
“We did.” He puffed out his chest.
At this, Harakasu’s face contorted... and he began trembling. And then, as if tremendously moved, he began to cry waterfalls of tears.
Kaname and the others stared at him in confusion.
“Ungh... unnngh. Magnificent. I’ve never felt so moved by such a thing. ‘You had another love already...’ What a beautiful... a beautiful line,” he choked out. “I feel so... so... ohhh, ohhhh!” The man let out a strange cry and clung to Sousuke. Apparently it had truly touched him.
“N-No way...” Kaname whispered.
“I don’t entirely understand, but it appears love is a very convenient thing,” Sousuke said, stone-faced.
〈A Past-Deadline Romance — The End〉
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